to the end
by messenger bird
Summary: because becoming more attached to Roxas was better than anything else. [axel x roxas]


disclaimer: no, i do not own kingdom hearts or its characters.

warning: guyxguy love and angst. don't like, don't read. bahaha.

meh, this came randomly to me during study hall.

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Blue eyes and soft blonde hair always haunted his dreams.

Roxas, the last member of the Organization, the 'Key of Destiny'. He drifted in Axel's fake dreams, dreams that Nobodies like themselves need not dream. Axel slept to see his beloved's face.

Those cerulean eyes, they followed him everywhere. He couldn't escape their mesmerizing depths, couldn't resist gazing into them and becoming paralyzed, something similar to a doomed bird locked in the hypnotizing eyes of a snake. He knew it was deadly to get too close, but he recklessly ignored the warnings, because becoming more attached to Roxas was better than anything else.

He'd wrapped the blonde around the place where his heart used to be, holding him close. The only thing left in his chest that roughly resembled the vital apparatus was merely an emotionless look-alike, the real deal in every mechanical way but a complete and utter failure compared to a real heart.

Axel cared so much, _too_ much about Roxas. He didn't even know where the feeling came from. Xemnas told them they had no hearts. They could not feel, how was this possible? Had he exceeded some limit and been granted heartfelt feeling? Real feeling?

No, this can't be real. _It's not_, he told himself over and over. _It's not real_, he told himself as the blonde shot him a rare smile during a conversation. _It's not real_, he told himself as the blonde shook and sobbed, as he held him close. _It's not real_, he told himself again and again. He was in denial, he realized the day that Roxas first kissed him.

It had started off like a normal day; Axel had just returned from a mission assigned by the Superior, and he had dragged himself to his room, looking forward to sitting around and doing nothing. He had just begun to allow his thoughts to stray to Roxas when said blonde knocked quietly on his closed door, tapping out a familiar rhythm then grasping the doorknob and stepping into VIII's room. "Axel?"

Said redhead was sprawled across his bed, an arm draped over his closed eyes. His legs hung off the end of the bed, blankets disheveled beneath his weary body, still fully dressed in Organization attire. A small smile crept onto Roxas' face and he walked soundlessly forward, sitting down next to his best friend on the bed. For a full minute he simply gazed at the Flurry of Dancing Flames, ultramarine eyes softening as the older male mumbled in his sleep and shifted. Then Roxas reached one gloved hand out and stroked Axel's cheek, sighing quietly. It was around this time that Axel woke up, although he kept his eyes shut when he realized exactly what was happening. The Keyblade-wielder bent down slightly, inhaling the slightly cinnamon-scented atmosphere around his best friend; it made his head spin dizzily. He leaned down more, imagining those soft lips on his in a sweet kiss…even though Axel didn't feel that way about him. After all, why would Axel love his own best friend, especially since they were both guys?

The answer was clear in Axel's mind. He had every reason to, even though it wasn't technically 'love', or so Xemnas claimed.

Axel waited. He waited and was rewarded. As soon as Roxas' lips touched his, his hand lifted on its own accord and placed itself on the blonde's cheek, an immediate blush coloring life to the younger Nobody's expression. Hastily and turning redder by the moment, Roxas pulled away but the redhead shook his head the slightest, green eyes opening and warm for once.

"Roxas, I think Xemnas is wrong."

---

Their relationship had progressed further over the empty days. Days turned into months, and just when Axel thought that perhaps he was okay with being a Nobody as long as it was with Roxas, that perhaps being without a heart wasn't as bad as it was thought to be, the day came that his non-existence changed for the worse.

Roxas disappeared. Rumor had it that he'd finally merged into his Somebody, Sora.

The one thing he had ever come as close as a Nobody could to loving, the one person that he'd cared about the most, Roxas, had slipped away like sand inevitably falling from his fingertips. He knew this would happen, knew he would lose his love…but he could not admit it, could not let the others see that he was breaking, that his only true friend, the only one he'd ever cared about had left him bleeding and wasting away.

Axel lived behind a façade.

On the outside, he was the same cocky, manipulative bastard that everyone secretly despised and feared. He was caustic like the fire he wielded, abrasive and powerful to the point of self-destruction. He murdered mercilessly the other members of the Organization, each spatter of blood on his hands numbing the agony he felt for the loss of his beloved thing.

_If Nobodies could not feel, why did they feel pain and misery? Answer that one, Xemnas_, he reflected on top of a clock tower in the fabricated city of Twilight Town, where he and Roxas had sat many a time to watch the forever-dusk sky and eat sea-salt ice cream, Roxas' favorite.

It hurt to remember the blonde, to remember how he made Axel feel.

Axel hated Sora, but he loved Roxas. Nobodies could not love, even though Axel claimed otherwise. Oh, the irony of it all.

Number VIII felt lonelier than ever as he fought side by side with the hero merged with his Roxas. _This one's for you_, he whispered mentally to the blonde as he let himself go.

_He made me feel like I had a heart._ Roxas' cerulean eyes stared down at the fading redhead, tears fueled by Sora's heart overflowing their ultramarine depths. Axel's weary green orbs locked with his as the last strands of him faded; every word he had said and not said was trapped within three painful syllables that his non-existent mouth tried to form but failed to sound, for his larynx was no more. The two Nobodies' pain and love were shared within that final glance, within three unspoken words as the final wisps of darkness consumed Axel's non-existent body.

_I love you._

_Don't forget me._

---

No, not even Axel knew the depths of his devotion to Roxas.

He sacrificed everything for nothing, and failed in the end.

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ohemgee. review, please? good feedback more writing. yesh. good reviews are...well, good.


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